How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

We're just buying a load of 8x4' 18mm Douglas Fir rotary-cut ply sheets, and getting our builder (who's also a joiner) to turn them into cabinet fronts and side panels.

Each sheet is ~£160+VAT, and you can get 6x standard (600x800) base cabinet fronts out of one.

Only risk with this, is visually ending up drowning in a sea of ply... We may well balance it out with doing the tall cabinets in pre-laminated white formica-faced ply. Will see how it looks with all the base cabinets done first.

That’s like saying you live in London when actually you live in Maidstone.

Ha. Zooming out for ages.

@hugo7 what Roberto actually does is almost having a heatstroke on the way to the beach and then he goes back indoors.

Lol! You're right. I didn't look at all, just selected the first property that was around €400

Still, easy ferries to your Ibiza wellness retreat and Mallorca cycling trips

cworkshop do a sheet of double sided white laminated 18mm birch ply for £177 inc VAT, or £198 cut up. I've used them for bespoke doors and sides for ikea pax wardrobes (incl hinge cutouts and edge-banding) see photo. They've a lot more finishes and a decent online pricing tool.

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More info / photos please! What height cupboards, how much bigger are the doors too and bottom than the cupboard? I assume that’s what you’ve done - some sort of overhang?

white laminated 18mm birch ply

Can you help me understand the rational for laminated birch ply?

If you're not seeing the wood, and damage to the lamination will make it look tatty and be unrepairable (vs paint), why not use laminated chipboard or mdf?

I’m guessing you’ll see the edge more and it’s nicer on ply!

I wondered if it was for custom sizes in the case of a built in wardrobe.

But for kitchen fronts, isn't there a tipping point where you may as well get a joiner to make proper ones out of real wood or just get actual ikea ones?

Maybe I'm diluded about wood costs, but the plykea style stuff sounds like a halfway house that's now priced at the wrong end of that scale.

Less prone to warping too

It's still more stable than real wood and the time/cost of joining panels varies according to the quality you want to achieve.

If you have the kit required to make even flat wood panels efficiently then you can take on Ikea.

The price of plywood has been forced up by the price of wood anyway so joiners costs for the raw material are higher too.

👍

See the drawing and photo. We did this in 2 rooms, in 1 of them 2 paxes of 100cm wide just fit in the space to fill so bespoke doors were only necessary to make up the height. In the other room, the space to fill was narrower so the doors are also to cover the width.

@hugo7 you're right, these doors had edgebanding so I did them in MDF. The laminated ply was for a table top and some shelves which I cut with a chamfer so you do see the edge

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So when do we get to see the whole house?

This is really interesting - I was going to do similar and then a pelmet sort deal over the top as we've got 2.8m ceilings, but this could be an option if we were to level out the ceilings.

What is that pax stuff like? I bough a small custom freestanding Platsa unit to gain some drawers in a built in wardrobe and it’s crap, I resented putting together something that was basically cardboard and wasting £140. Should have bought something old and more sturdy but it was hard to find something the right size.

Which bit do you want to see? It's been 2 years since we built it and 2 weeks since I finished dealing with the roofs that weren't waterproof. I'll try take some decent photos in the coming weeks when the green roofs and other plants have recovered a bit...

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No complaints after 2years, seems sturdy (attached to the wall and maybe the extra sides reinforce it too) - I'm sure you get better drawers and stuff when you go bespoke but we couldn't afford that

Excellent, thank you! They look great and it’s a much better idea than wasting space and having a pelmet as I was going to as well.

can you remember if you bought the pax carcasses without the doors? They seem to come in two versions, but I’m not sure yet whether you can get the “drilled for door hinges” version without also getting doors from them. I think that would be easier than buying the “doorless” version and trying to drill it for the hinges myself.

All of it!
The bits I remember are really nice, and those wardrobes are also as good as white boxes to put stuff in can be. And bathroom is also hot.
Looks like emphasis on creating nice spaces and good design but probably no funds for gimmicks, and that's very interesting.

Yes, I bought carcasses without doors and also used different (blum) hinges as the ikea hinges aren't standard / what cworkshop do. You want to spread the hinges across the height of the door, so any pre-drilling in the (lower) carcass wouldn't be in the right place. It's not too hard to screw them into the carcass though: put hinges on the door, hold in the right place and screw.

Ah cool. Thank you. I was being thick. Ofc the big circular cut out is on the door, not the carcass.

Presumably CWorkshop cut those out

It's ok. We've got it on a slightly sloped floor and it didn't really have the rigidity to get it properly straight.

It's got some pretty heavy stuff in it though and seems fairly sturdy. You are unlikely to get anything else as good for twice the price.

Having just bought a small semi, with vague plans to knock a wall out and stick a box on the back, I've been hoovering up the advice in this thread - thanks all!

The other semi have just started works on a (pretty ugly but hey) box to extend the space in the roof. I'm not against the works really - live and let live with our future plans hopefully.

Question is: should I be requesting a party wall agreement? It's a bit late I guess: they're already up there and rebuilding the (shared) parapet but only started last week on ~10w project...

Any experience on post-start PWAs?